Having rare earth metals next to Earth’s capital (heh, Siberia in this game) lets me start with a level 4 computer core. This means I get +1 research for the base core plus +4 research for being level 4. A very nice start.

I set my colony ship’s destination to this star system.

Then I choose Interstellar Travel to get a speed bump.

I also rush build a colony ship so that I can begin exploring in other directions for habitable planets.

Turn 5

There is a huge sea of high radiation just outside Earth’s solar system. On the other hand, it means there is some Elerium around.

Proxima Centauri is a strike out. Boo! Nothing near Wolf 359!

So we meet

So we have have the Drengin. They have a slight lead.

Finally!

WAR!

This time they declare war on me first!

They are quite a bit ahead of me. However, being able to build up doesn’t mean they are good at waging war.

Okay they are quite serious.

This isn’t going well.

OH yea. The peace keepers. Thank goodness.

Is it wrong for me to take advantage of a rare galactic event? Yes. Yes it is. But this is war.

OH come on! Where’s my peacekeeper?

And at turn 200 or so the huge hulled ships come out! I think they killed the Peacekeepers!

Yes. YES I will take that peace offer. They’ve taken Mars. They’ve taken two of my other planets. I have a total of two planets left.

On the edge of destruction

So my strategy at this point is to do a lightning strike across the Drengin Empire. I’ve put everything into a single powerful ship and I hope to be able to take the Drengin by surprise.

Damn it!

So will my Salvation class ship win?

This is the battle that will decide my fate.

Note that in 2.8, defenses only get reduced by the square root of the attack rather than the full attack.

it is not enough to save earth!

And so ends the Terran Alliance.

How did I lose?

I’m not going to say that the Drengin got “lucky”. Rather, I got particularly unlucky. I sent ships in the exact worst directions. The planets seeded near me were much higher quality than the Drengin planets seeded near it. However, I didn’t find them until too late. Next time I’ll make a custom map.

The AI improvements

The AI is just plain much better than it was back in 2.5.

Ship designs are much better. No more crappy weapons on ships. It also benefited from more effective war making.

I started out ahead of it in economy but as it developed up its planets faster, the distance between us just became insurmountable.

Galactic Civilizations III v2.8 is expected to be publicly released in about 2 weeks. Cheers!

Note that in 2.8, defenses only get reduced by the square root of the attack rather than the full attac

Now *that* is interesting, never saw that mentioned before, but I really like it. So defenses are worth it again (provided this change also applies to Crusade), in my last couple of games I tended to neglect them entirely.

Is this calculated per-weapon or per-ship? It seems like it would make a swarm of small attacks more powerful than a single big one (since N attacks with power 1 would reduce the appropriate defense by N...)

By the way, 2.8 opt-in is amazing and while I wasn't too much into GalCiv 3 at release, I really enjoy it now. The progress was incredible. Also, I'm getting my behind handed to me at normal difficulty, I need to learn how to properly optimize my start .

Is this calculated per-weapon or per-ship? It seems like it would make a swarm of small attacks more powerful than a single big one (since N attacks with power 1 would reduce the appropriate defense by N...)

As far as I know it's calculated per ship, so yes, with the new system small ships gain significance.